For this year’s «Nuit des Musées» the Monnaie de Paris will provide visitors with a playful meeting place, a space for creation and discovery, in advance of the opening of its impressive transformation project, MétaLmorphoses, in February 2013.

Rob Pruitt’s project constitutes an irreverant exploration of the relationship between art and money. Responding to Marcel Duchamp’s affirmation that «art is a product just like beans. We buy art like we buy spaghetti», Rob Pruitt invites 80 artists to take part in the Flea Market where visitors can contemplate the works, shop for vintage clothes, posters, have their cards read, have a cup of tea and much more… At the heart of this unusual flea market, artists will present objects dear to them or which they have cobbled together, empty their closets, sell their masterpieces or create participative events.  

Whether his close friends or celebrities, Rob Pruitt has brought together a wide range of artists – at this time when the Museum of money is being entirely rethought – to take part in this performance which promises to be once of the most rich and unexpected projects of the «Nuit des Musées» in Paris.  

A playful critic of the art world structures, in the tradition of the pop artists, the work of the American artist Rob Pruitt is equally categorised as the organisation of sensational events as simple interventions, revealing the creative possibilities at the heart of everyday life.

From his sparkling paintings of pandas to his sculptural blue jeans, Rob Pruitt’s work is always characterized by an incisive humour and an exuberant visual talent. He creates environments where visitors feel free to improvise and experiment, outside of the traditional fields of art.

The artist presented his first Flea Market at Gavin Brown’s enterprise in New York in 2000; there he brought together artists including Elizabeth Peyton, Piotr Uklanski and Rikrit Tiravanija who sold all sorts of merchandise: prints, home-made objects in a set close to the «bric-a-brac».

For Frieze 2007, Rob Pruitt persuaded his galerist to transform his stand into a flea market where artists presented affordable editions as well as vinyl records and vintage clothes. 

In December 2009 at Tate Modern in London, with Gavin Turk and Tracey Emin among others, he presented a new version of his market, offering an ironic alternative to traditional Christmas shopping…  

For the «Nuit des Musées», 19 May 2012, Rob Pruitt has designed an exceptional token, minted by the Monnaie de Paris in an edition of 3,000. The token will be on sale at the Flea Market.

Artistic biography of Rob Pruitt

Solo exhibitions (selection)

2012, Kunstverein, Fribourg 2011, Air de Paris, Paris 2010, Rob Pruitt's 2010 Art Awards, Guggenheim Museum, New York 2009, Rob Pruitt's Christmas Flea Market, Tate Modern, London 2007, Rob Pruitt's Flea Market, Gavin Brown's enterprise, Frieze Art Fair, London 2002, Le Consortium, Dijon 1992, Leo Castelli Gallery, New York 1991, Esther Schipper, Cologne.

Group exhibitions (selection)

2010, Fresh Hell, Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Touched, Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool 2009, Mapping the Studio, François Pinault Foundation, Venice 2006, The Gold Standard, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York 2005, Seeing Double, The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh 2002, Shanghai Biennale, Shanhgai 2000, Protest and Survive, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London 1992, Castello di Rivoli, Italie; Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens.

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